REEL 13 CLASSIC | GORILLAS IN THE MIST This week’s classic is Gorillas in the Mist, the 1988 biographical drama directed by Michael Apted. In a heroic, Oscar-nominated performance, Sigourney Weaver stars as Dian Fossey, the primatologist and conservationist who became internationally famous for her study of the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | ALGIERS This week’s classic is Algiers, a 1938 romantic drama directed by John Cromwell. Charles Boyer stars as Pepe le Moko, an infamous Parisian thief who has been hiding out for two years in the labyrinthine Casbah neighborhood of Algiers, the capital city of Algeria during that country’s ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | CHINATOWN This week’s classic is Chinatown, the 1974 neo-noir detective mystery written by Robert Towne and directed by Roman Polanski. Although the film noir genre actually encompassed a wide range of subject matter, for most audiences it was best epitomized by iconic detective movies like The Maltese Falcon, ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | THE CAINE MUTINY This week’s classic is The Caine Mutiny, from 1954, starring Van Johnson, Fred McMurray, José Ferrer, and Humphrey Bogart. The film was based on Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, which itself was loosely based on an actual World War II incident that had already ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | HOLIDAY This week’s classic is the delightful 1938 romantic comedy Holiday, starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, and directed by George Cukor. Holiday is one of playwright Philip Barry’s two most successful and best remembered plays, the other being The Philadelphia Story, which also provided Katharine Hepburn with ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | STAND BY ME This week’s classic is Stand By Me, the 1986 coming of age comedy-drama directed by Rob Reiner. Adapted from Stephen King’s autobiographically inspired novella “The Body,” Stand By Me begins its tale of a childhood summer adventure from the nostalgic vantage point of an adult perspective. ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | WITNESS This week’s classic is Witness, the romantic crime-thriller from 1985 directed by Peter Weir. Opening with a horse-drawn funeral procession winding through gently flowing wheat fields, Witness takes us to a wonderland hiding in plain sight—the bucolic farm land of Pennsylvania Dutch country. In this dream-like vision ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | HIGH NOON This week’s classic is High Noon, the iconic 1952 western directed by Fred Zinnemann. Produced during the peak years of the Blacklist era, far from being a conventional western High Noon was often interpreted—and in some corners derided—as being a thinly veiled parable about the political ...
REEL 13 CLASSIC | OLIVER! This week’s classic is Oliver!, the musical adaptation of Charles Dickens literary classic Oliver Twist, directed by Carol Reed. Anyone who has ever read Charles Dickens’ classic portrait of poverty-row London might have problems initially imagining the novel as a likely source for a musical. However, we ...
